1. Field of the Invention
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to electronic messaging systems, and more particularly, to the display of avatars representing users communicating within electronic messaging systems.
2. Description of Background
Instant messaging (IM) is an online chat medium based on typed text that allows users to communicate with each other and to collaborate in real-time over a network, commonly the Internet. Instant messaging applications monitor and report the status of users that have established each other as online contacts. This information is typically presented to a user in a window. Instant messaging allows instantaneous communication between a number of parties simultaneously by transmitting information quickly and efficiently, and featuring immediate receipt of acknowledgement or reply. For these reasons, instant messaging applications also are often used by users conducting business. By utilizing instant messaging, business users can view each other's availability and initiate a text conversation with colleagues or customers when a desired contact becomes available. Millions of users communicate using instant messaging systems every day. With instant messaging becoming an important part of both personal and business communications, communication enhancements are important to the continued success of this type of communication tool.
With today's advanced communication technology, people increasingly communicate with people from cultures very different from their own without the restrictions of time and space. The social conventions of electronic communications such as instant messaging are similar that those of face-to-face communications and thus often reflect the societal conventions of the cultures in which the parties exist. In face-to-face situations, however, the concurrent use of both verbal and non-verbal communication enables a rich, multi-modal environment that provides each communicating party with the ability to construct a physical identification of another communicating party using visual and/or auditory characteristics. With digital communications that involve typed text such as instant messaging, all that is typically communicated are the words themselves, which do not always necessarily provide sufficient gender identification information that would be conveyed in a face-to-face conversation.
There are thousands of languages in use today, which provides for a wide variety of given or first names. In nearly every culture, given names are commonly used as a contextual form of identity, of which gender is one component. In most cultures, persons of different gender are generally addressed differently during communications according to particular cultural and social conventions (for example, in English speaking countries, men can be addressed formally using ‘Sir’ or ‘Mr.’, and women can be addressed formally using ‘Madam’, ‘Mrs.’, ‘Miss’, or ‘Ms.’).
Electronic communications are generally subject to the same or similar social categories and rules to that of real world communications, and as a result, the types of cultural differences described above can often present problems in assessing gender during instant messaging conversations. Generally, an English speaking person can correctly guess whether a particular individual whom he never met is female or male during a communications session based on the first name of that person, when it is provided. But when messaging with people having names originating from other cultures with which the person is not very familiar, for example, people with Indian or Chinese first names, the task of assessing gender may be more challenging. Particularly in situations in which the electronic messaging system is being used for professional purposes, a lack of knowledge of the gender of the person being communicated with in a messaging session this could lead to potentially offensive communication gaffes and faux pas.